Devin Naar MATRIX

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If You Can't Stand the Heat

Image above is from the base of the cross in front of the church of São Francisco do Paraguaçu in the Bahian Recôncavo

Sprawled across broad equatorial latitudes, stoked and steamed and sensual in the widest sense of the word, limned in cadenced song, Brazil is a conundrum wrapped in a smile inside an irony...

It is not a European nation. It is not a North American nation. It is not an East Asian nation. It straddles — jungle and desert and dense urban centers — both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin. It was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil's national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people). Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil's culturally fecund nordeste/northeast, where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa (Lagoon of the Canoe) and raised in Olho d'Águia (Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil's aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David. Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Pandeirista on the roof. Nowhere else but here.

Oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption — elements of these are still strongly entrenched — have defined, delineated, and limited Brazil.

But strictured & bound as it has been and is, Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of — or perhaps because of — the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.

For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...

Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.

"Onde tem miséria, tem música!"* - Raymundo Sodré

And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.

Welcome to the kitchen!

* "Where there is misery, there is music!" Remarked during a conversation arcing from Bahia to Haiti and Cuba to New Orleans and the south side of Chicago and Harlem to the villages of Ireland and the gypsy camps and shtetls of Eastern Europe...

Devin Naar I RECOMMEND

CURATION

from this node by: Sparrow/Pardal

This is the Universe of

Name: Devin Naar
City/Place: Seattle, Washington
Country: United States

Life & Work

Bio: Devin E. Naar is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies, Assistant Professor of History, and Chair of the Sephardic Studies Program at the University of Washington. Born and raised in New Jersey, Dr. Naar graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis, where he wrote an award-winning senior thesis. Following a year in Greece as a Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Naar began his PhD in History at Stanford University, where he won an award for excellence in teaching. Dr. Naar’s dissertation, “Jewish Salonica and the ‘Making of the Jerusalem of the Balkans,’ 1890-1943,” received the Elizabeth Spillman Rosenfeld Prize for best written dissertation in Stanford’s Department of History in 2011.

Since joining the UW faculty in 2011, Dr. Naar has been working on a book manuscript, based on his dissertation, entitled,Jewish Salonica, which explores the multiple ways in which Jews in Salonica grappled with the end of the Ottoman Empire and their new-found position within the context of the Greek state during the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of previously unstudied primary sources, such as archives and newspapers primarily written in Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), Jewish Salonica is the first book to tell the story of the tumultuous transition from empire to nation-state through the voices and perspectives of Salonican Jews themselves. The book traces key questions that Jews in Salonica asked during this period of readjustment: What willhappen to our Community? Who will serve as our leader? Who will tell our story? What will become of our dead? Ultimately, the answers Salonican Jews gave to these questions demonstrate that they hoped to bridge the chasm between empire and nation-state by reaffirming their connection to their city and by claiming the city as their own–even on the eve of the Holocaust.

Currently a fellow in the Society of Scholars at the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington, Dr. Naar has also begun a second book project, Reimagining the Sephardic Diaspora. This book explores the dispersal of Sephardic Jews from the dissolving Ottoman Empire during the early twentieth century and the creation of new Sephardic communal hubs in Europe and the Americas—including Seattle. By focusing on the multiple directions of transnational migration, the links Sephardic Jews retained with their native communities, and the relationships they developed with other Jews and migrants from the Mediterranean, this project compels us to reconceptualize the geographic and theoretical lines between the “old world” and the “new.”

At the UW, Dr. Naar teaches courses linked to his areas of research, including modern Jewish history; Jewish culture from antiquity until today; Sephardic history and culture; the history and memory of the Holocaust; relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims in lands of the former Ottoman Empire; migrations from the Mediterranean world to the Americas in the twentieth century; and a graduate seminar on Jews, Cities and Empires. He also supervises MA and PhD students in fields such as modern Jewish history and culture, Sephardic Studies, and transnational studies.

As the chair of the new Sephardic Studies Program of the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies housed within the Jackson School of International Studies, Dr. Naar has begun a pilot project entitled, “Seattle Sephardic Treasures,” which seeks to collect, preserve and disseminate the rich Sephardic and Ladino historical, literary and cultural heritage. The first major Sephardic Studies Digital Library and Archive–an online Sephardic Museum–is in the works based on the more than 700 artifacts, books and letters collected so far from residents of the Seattle area. In addition to the digital initiative, the Sephardic Studies Program also hosts a wide range of student, scholarly and public programs that each draw hundreds of participants. The Sephardic Studies Program has already received extensive local, national and international media attention.

In recognition of the contributions he has already made to the study of Sephardic history, Dr. Naar was recently elected to the Academic Advisory Council of the Center for Jewish History in New York. He is the only assistant professor to receive this prestigious post, where he will represent the American Sephardic Federation. Dr. Naar was also elected to the Academic Council of the American Jewish Historical Society.

He conducts research in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish/Judezmo), Greek, Hebrew and French.

Contact Information

Email: [email protected]
Telephone: +1 (206) 616-6202
Address: University of Washington
Thomson Hall 226
Seattle, WA 98195

Media | Markets

▶ Book Purchases: http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25672
▶ Website: http://devinenaar.com
▶ Website 2: http://jewishstudies.washington.edu/sephardic-studies/sephardic-studies-digital-library-museum/
▶ Articles: http://devinenaar.com/publications

My Writing

Publications: JEWISH SALONICA: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece

Touted as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," the Mediterranean port city of Salonica (Thessaloniki) was once home to the largest Sephardic Jewish community in the world. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the city's incorporation into Greece in 1912 provoked a major upheaval that compelled Salonica's Jews to reimagine their community and status as citizens of a nation-state. Jewish Salonica is the first book to tell the story of this tumultuous transition through the voices and perspectives of Salonican Jews as they forged a new place for themselves in Greek society.

Devin E. Naar traveled the globe, from New York to Salonica, Jerusalem, and Moscow, to excavate archives once confiscated by the Nazis. Written in Ladino, Greek, French, and Hebrew, these archives, combined with local newspapers, reveal how Salonica's Jews fashioned a new hybrid identity as Hellenic Jews during a period marked by rising nationalism and economic crisis as well as unprecedented Jewish cultural and political vibrancy. Salonica's Jews—Zionists, assimilationists, and socialists—reinvigorated their connection to the city and claimed it as their own until the Holocaust. Through the case of Salonica's Jews, Naar recovers the diverse experiences of a lost religious, linguistic, and national minority at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East.